


Transfer

by idrilhadhafang



Series: Rise/Set Verse [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Missing Scene, Movie: Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, cloning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:28:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28181658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilhadhafang
Summary: How did Palpatine survive the Second Death Star?
Series: Rise/Set Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2064489
Kudos: 2
Collections: Bad Day Collection, Gen Prompt Bingo Round 19





	Transfer

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Old and New
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

  
Lightning. Screams. Even as Emperor Palpatine plummeted down the Death Star reactor shaft, his scream was as much of rage as it was of fear. Vader had betrayed him. After twenty-three years as a subservient, loyal whelp, Palpatine found that Vader had turned on him — and for what? His own flesh and blood? Palpatine himself had cared nothing for his own family and Vader was willing to trade everything for one worthless Jedi.   
  
How? Why?   
  
Of course, it wasn’t the end —  
  
The blue light that shot up from the Death Star’s reactor shaft should have been a warning. Palpatine’s spirit fled. Fled past Skywalker and Vader, both exhausted from their ordeal, towards Exegol, across stars and hyperspace routes —  
  
***  
  
The clone that was of Darth Sidious, also known as Sheev Palpatine, also known as the presumed dead Emperor, woke in agony.   
  
He couldn’t say that he knew where he was. A world shrouded in darkness, a world that seemed like it was waiting for people to be filling the empty seats. People, he imagined. Shrouded in black robes, all but seeing him as their savior...  
  
He would be. Sidious knew that what Vader — treacherous, sentimental Vader — had done was just a minor setback in the long run. True, this new body was far from perfect. That was obvious. He could feel his skin all but melting and frying, even though it wasn’t, not really.   
  
It burned without truly burning. He supposed, in the end, that Vader had gotten his own punishment over on him, for Sidious was trapped in a body that didn’t even suit him.   
  
He had heard tales of Exegol. He remembered. Plagueis had told stories that his master had passed down from his master, how Exegol was the first homeworld of the Sith. _“No matter how much the Jedi practice their genocide, they could never find Exegol,”_ Plagueis had said.  
  
Sidious fully intended to keep it that way. Even as fantasies entered his mind as how to best punish Vader for his treachery, he knew he had to operate from the shadows. It was no problem; he had done that before. Had done it deliberately, flawlessly with playing the Separatists and the Republic against each other until they destroyed each other.   
  
He would need a figurehead, of course. A smokescreen. He knew that he was fully intending on calling his new order the “Final Order”. A step down from the word Galactic Empire, but very well...  
  
(And the smokescreen...would it be called the First Order? There was a certain kind of poetry in it, and Sheev Palpatine had never been averse to that)  
  
***  
  
Walking, admittedly, felt like parts of the Sidious-clone were on fire. Parts. But he persevered nonetheless. He was the former Emperor of the galaxy. He was all the Sith. It wasn’t like he was a sniveling weakling brought low by just a bit of pain.   
  
Exegol’s skies had their own beauty, Palpatine reflected. The storminess of them, the feeling of nigh perpetual winter that existed there. Storms. They said winter did not last forever, but winter could leave its own damage in its wake.   
  
Black. Dark blue. Gray. It was not Mustafar, and there was no fleet yet that filled the skies of Exegol making the stars tremble and shake in fear of what could be unleashed. But Palpatine nonetheless felt a grim sense of satisfaction, of reverence, imagining the ships that would fill the sky and cut like blades through it.   
  
Victory. Revenge.   
  
Vader had interrupted both, but there was no reason Palpatine couldn’t slowly revive them.


End file.
